Meeting looks beyond NAFTA

Updated 8:35 pm, Friday, November 16, 2012

Photo: Bob Owen, San Antonio Express-News

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Jaime Serra Puche, left, Head HAFTA Negotiator for Mexico from 91-94, and Thomas Donohue, President and CEO of U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speak on a panel at NAFTA20 North America Summit, at The Westin La Cantera, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012.

Jaime Serra Puche, left, Head HAFTA Negotiator for Mexico from 91-94, and Thomas Donohue, President and CEO of U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speak on a panel at NAFTA20 North America Summit, at The Westin La

Upcoming trade liberalization talks with Asian, European and South American countries will allow the United States, Mexico and Canada to move beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement, which largely has fulfilled its trade-growth purpose.

That was the conjecture widely voiced Friday during the final day of the NAFTA20 conference staged by the North American Development Bank and the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos and attended by more than 500 business and government leaders from across the continent.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which started in 2007 as a proposed trade agreement between South American and Asian countries and which the three NAFTA nations are in the process of joining, marks the first time that the three NAFTA countries have engaged in trade talks among themselves in nearly 20 years, said John Weekes, an adviser to a Canadian law firm and who was a leading Canadian negotiator for NAFTA in the early 1990s.

Speculation has arisen recently that the European Union will start negotiations soon with the United States or other NAFTA nations, Weekes said.

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“But we are kind of sleepwalking into it. We are not thinking about the opportunities and consequences, but it's an opportunity to improve (NAFTA),” Weekes said.

He said political problems would arise if the United States, Mexico and Canada reopened NAFTA for new provisions. “But with the TPP, it's an opportunity to update NAFTA on the margins of these other negotiations.”

As TPP negotiations advance, “We will negotiate among ourselves. We are Pacific nations as well,” added Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce based in Washington.

“TPP and Europe is a chance for us to get together and to consider the positions we are going to take,” said Jaime Serra Puche, a Mexico City consultant who was Mexico's top NAFTA negotiator 20 years ago.

The TPP is expected to broaden trade rules into areas that did not exist 20 years ago, such as issues involving digital technologies.

“We were thinking long term (two decades ago). We need to think long term again,” Serra said.

Meanwhile, the tariff reductions and supply chain integrations that occurred under NAFTA will continue to benefit North America, especially as wages rise and policies change in China, making production in that country more expensive, Serra said.

Serra estimated Mexico has a 15 percent transportation cost advantage over China in delivering goods to the U.S.

NAFTA will continue to have a beneficial effect for at least another 20 years.

“We'll be talking about the success of NAFTA” because of energy trade, possible increased labor mobility and by taking advantage of the continent's youthful demographics, said Roger Wallace, a former San Antonian and now a Dallas energy executive who was an early NAFTA advocate.

The NAFTA “brand” needs to be strengthened, said Robert Pastor, a North America scholar and author of numerous books. One way would be for the three NAFTA counties to develop collaboratively, instead of separately, policies on the economy, environment, education and immigration.

Annual growth in NAFTA trade, which started in 1994, actually peaked in 2001 with an 18 percent growth that year, but momentum has declined since then, partly because of new regulations that followed the 9/11 attacks.

“We need to show respect for our close neighbors,” Pastor said. “If we treat our neighbors better, we'll all be better off.”